Change the state-city relationship

Rebuilding New Jersey's cities is not just about coming up with new and better programs. It's not even about money, although money is always needed. Rebuilding New Jersey's cities hinges on changing the deeply troubled relationship that exists today between our state government and its cities.

New Jersey sends billions of dollars to its older cities every year through Abbott school aid, municipal aid, economic development incentives, housing programs and much more.

Although this money helps, it accomplishes far less than it might because it is embedded in a relationship of low expectations and mutual distrust in which the state imposes a complex web of strict regulations on municipal government, yet does little to reward better performance or help it build greater capacity. It neither offers the cities a strategic direction for what should be done with those billions nor encourages them to develop their own strategies.

Faced with this reality, it is not surprising that many cities have difficulty pursuing important new directions or engaging their residents, business leaders and nonprofit organizations in making the cities better places. With little support from the state for change, under constant pressure and faced with recurrent short-term crises, it is unrealistic to expect the cities to behave otherwise.

As New Jersey struggles with a challenging future in which its competitive position is threatened by other states and other countries, we need to confront two fundamental questions: What can be done to enable our cities to grow, building a sustainable economy and quality of life, and how can we ensure that the benefits of that growth are shared by all, whatever their race, ethnicity or economic condition?

In the Housing and Community Development Network's new report, "New Jersey and its Cities: An Agenda for Urban Transformation," we tackle these questions and lay out a strategy to transform our cities.

First, New Jersey and its cities need a new relationship grounded in a partnership in which the state and cities work together to frame strategies for economic growth, neighborhood revitalization and environmental sustainability. For such a partnership to work, the bureaucratic minefield that cities are forced to navigate must be abandoned. The tools and resources that the state offers must be recast as flexible programs designed to re ward strategic thinking, increased capacity and improved performance. Changing the relationship will not come easily and will demand that all the parties be willing to work hard and take risks to succeed.

Many changes to specific programs would flow from this new relationship. We could begin with redesigning some of the state's economic development incentives, such as the urban enterprise zone program or the statute that permits cities to create revenue allocation districts, where money in vested in economic development projects is repaid by the increased tax revenues they generate. We could make them easier to use and more targeted so that cities could spend their time doing serious economic development rather than jumping through bureaucratic hoops.

The state needs to take a fresh look at its housing programs and get the four state agencies involved in housing to work together so that the hundreds of millions they in vest annually further urban revitalization. The state needs to partner with the private sector to build high-density, mixed-income and mixed-use communities in our urban downtowns, transit hubs and neighborhood centers, rather than scattering housing -- however desirable in itself -- across the landscape.

With a reinvigorated, reorganized State Planning Commission, the state could begin coordinating its regulations and investments, balancing the need to improve our environmental quality with the need to build a strong economy and enable every family in the state to find a decent, affordable place to live.

New Jersey can no longer afford the luxury of planning in silos, where environmental protection, transportation, infrastructure investment and economic development incentives are all conducted with little reference to one another.

These are but a beginning. In the end, the core issue is not the programs but the relationship that drives them. The question is this: Will the state show the leadership and the will to initiate the change from today's dysfunctional relation ship to a new partnership that will put the cities on the track of sustainable and equitable revitalization?

Diane Sterner is the executive director of the Housing and Community Development Network of New Jersey. Alan Mallach is a member of the network's executive board and former director of housing and economic development for Trenton. They co-authored "New Jersey and its Cities: An Agenda for Urban Transformation, which is available athttp://www.hcdnnj.org."